Iceland Bus shows scheduled public-transport times for Iceland, published by
BotSquash. This policy explains how the app handles your information.
Short version: there is no account and no analytics. The free version shows a small
banner ad from Unity Ads on trip results, stop departures and timetables; Iceland Bus Pro has no
ads. Your GPS position stays on your device. A place search sends the words you type, plus an
area of about 2 km around you, to a search service. Payments for the optional Iceland Bus Pro
subscription go through Google Play. Everything is described in full below.
Iceland Bus has no account, keeps no profile of you and does not collect personal
data on its own servers. The app contacts a few public services, listed under
"What the app sends over the Internet", Google Play Billing if you buy Iceland Bus Pro, and,
in the free version, Unity Ads (see "Advertising").
What stays on your device
Your saved journeys, favourite stops, reminders, Commute Watch settings and settings, and a
record of which line alerts you have already seen.
Your Iceland Bus Pro status: your plan and, for a 7-day pass, when it ends. This is so
that Pro works offline.
Simple usage counters shown on a hidden Diagnostics screen. They are never sent
anywhere.
The country of your SIM card. It is read on the device only, to choose which Pro plan the
app shows first: a 7-day pass for visitors, yearly for residents. It is never sent anywhere,
and no phone permission is needed for it.
The app has no analytics, crash-reporting or tracking SDK of its own. The only third-party
SDK that collects data is Unity Ads, in the free version (see "Advertising").
Location
Location permission is optional. If you grant it, Iceland Bus uses your device's GPS for two
things:
to find bus stops near you and plan trips "from your location"
while a Ride mode ride you started is running, to count the stops to
yours and sound the stop alarm. This keeps working with the screen off and is shown by an
ongoing notification. It ends when you arrive, stop the ride or close the app.
Your GPS position is compared with the app's own stop database on your
device and is never sent to us or to anyone else. The one exception is place search
(below), which sends an area of about 2 km, not your position. The app does not request
background location permission.
What the app sends over the Internet
Timetables: the app downloads Strætó bs.'s public timetable file
(opendata.straeto.is), so that schedules work offline. No personal information is sent.
Place search: when you type a place or address, the text you type is
sent to Photon (photon.komoot.io), a search service built on OpenStreetMap data. If the app
knows your location, it also sends an area of about 2 km around you, so that nearby
places come first. Your exact position is never sent. Stop names are searched on your device.
See photon.komoot.io for komoot's own terms.
Map: map images come from OpenStreetMap's tile servers
(tile.openstreetmap.org), which see which part of the map is being shown.
Places near a stop: a stop's screen may look up nearby places through
the Overpass API (overpass-api.de). It uses the stop's coordinates, not
yours.
Line alerts: the app downloads one public file of service alerts
(detours, closures, holiday timetables) from botsquash.com, our website. Everyone gets the
same file, and nothing about you is sent with it. Which alerts match your lines is worked out
on your device.
Like any website, each of these services can see your device's IP address when it is
contacted. None of them receives an account identifier or an advertising ID. Iceland Bus does
not show the real-time positions of buses. If that is ever added, this policy will be updated
first.
Notifications, reminders and Commute Watch
Notifications are optional. The app asks for them only when you use a feature that needs
them:
Reminders you set on a departure or a trip result.
Ride mode: the ongoing ride notification and the stop alarm.
Commute Watch: for a saved journey you choose, the app sets an alarm on
your device for each day you picked. About 25 minutes before you need to leave, it checks the
timetable stored on your phone. It then tells you when to go, or that your bus does not run
that day. At the same time it downloads the line-alerts file described above.
Line alerts for the lines of your saved journeys.
All of these are scheduled and decided on your device. To do this, the app uses the exact
alarm and "run at startup" permissions, so that your alarms come back after the phone
restarts.
Home-screen widget
The optional widget shows the next departures for your saved stops and journeys, using data
already on your device. Nothing is sent to make it work.
Iceland Bus Pro (subscription)
Iceland Bus Pro is optional. It adds Commute Watch, line-alert notifications, unlimited
reminders, saved journeys and favourite stops, and the home-screen widget. Trip planning,
search, timetables, the map, Ride mode and offline data are free.
Pro comes as a monthly or yearly subscription, which renews automatically
until you cancel, or as a 7-day pass, which is paid once and does not renew.
A one-time lifetime purchase may also be offered. The yearly plan may include a free trial for
new subscribers. Every price, and any trial, is shown in the app before you buy.
You can cancel a subscription at any time in Google Play, under Payments and
subscriptions.
Purchases are sold and processed entirely by Google Play Billing. We
never see or store your card or payment details. Google Play holds the purchase record. The
app reads it to confirm Pro and to restore it on a new device; "Restore" in Settings does this
on request. Google's handling is covered by
Google's privacy policy.
Permissions
Internet: the downloads and searches listed above, Google Play
Billing and, in the free version, Unity Ads.
Advertising ID: used by Unity Ads in the free version only.
Location (optional): used on the device only, as described above. No
background location permission is requested.
Foreground service (location): only while a Ride mode ride you started
is running.
Notifications, exact alarms, run at startup, vibration: reminders, Ride
mode, Commute Watch and line alerts.
Billing: Iceland Bus Pro through Google Play.
The app does not use contacts, camera, microphone or phone state.
Advertising (free version only)
From version 1.4.0 the free version shows one small banner ad from Unity
Ads (Unity Technologies) at the bottom of trip results, stop departures and the full
timetable. There are no ads on the map, in search, during a ride, or in full screen. No ads are
shown the first time you use the app. The Unity SDK may collect your advertising
ID, device and network information, approximate location derived from your IP address
(never your GPS position), and ad interaction data, and may share it with its ad partners, for
advertising, measurement and fraud prevention. This data goes to Unity, not to us. See
Unity's Game Player and
App User Privacy Policy.
Personalised ads are off unless you turn them on in Settings, Personalised
ads.
You can reset or delete your advertising ID in Android settings (Privacy, Ads).
Iceland Bus Pro has no ads: for Pro users the ad SDK is not started at
all.
Iceland Bus itself holds almost no personal data about you: there is no account and no
server-side profile. Some processing may still apply to you, through a search sent to Photon, a
purchase through Google Play, or Unity Ads in the free version. For that processing, you have these rights under the GDPR, as it
applies in Iceland under the EEA Agreement:
Right of access: you can ask what data, if any, is held about you.
Right to erasure: uninstalling the app removes everything held on your
device. For anything Google holds, use
Google's account privacy controls.
Right to object: contact us (below). You can also choose not to grant
location permission, and then no location area is sent with a search.
Right to lodge a complaint with your data protection supervisory
authority. In Iceland, that is the
Icelandic Data Protection Authority (Persónuvernd).
Elsewhere in the EEA, it is your own country's authority.
Children
The app is for a general audience and is not directed at children. The app itself collects
no personal data from anyone; the free version's Unity Ads banner is described under
"Advertising".
Changes
If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date above will change. If you keep using the
app, you accept the current policy.